Happy Winter 2022 Solstice!

Solstice morning (12/21), I went to write at a cafe and managed to snag a tarot reading.  The gist of the first half of the reading was, focus on one thing, prep for writing and be ready for the muse, but loosen up and try not to force things.  Also, cleaning up a work space is like unblocking congested feng shui.  The second half was set down the things you're doing, take stock, and choose the direction you want to take (and have fun on your Summer trip).  

I came away with a reminder that wands can symbolize fiery inspiration, which is different from the inspiration from the airy heights or the intuition of the suit of cups.  Also, when I attend Eugene Pride events, I'm re-telling myself the fifteen-year-old story of being the only gay dad at a Eugene community meeting of about two hundred.  

Mark was kind enough to purchase a Solstice Gift for me—a pierced gnomon pocket sundial. I had told him about it a couple of weeks ago with the caveat that it was "totally frivolous."  It has a latitude ring,  a horizon ring, and a calendar bridge that has a sliding pierced gnomon.  I'm waiting for a clear enough day to use it; right now it's leading a double-life as a Christmas Tree ornament.  It's very cool, and I need to find an effective hook near a window for it.

The day was mostly cloudy, but there was enough of a break in the clouds to allow me to focus sunlight onto a candle (okay, I cheat a little and hold a match next to the wick) and light it.  I honestly believed that it would be too cloudy to perform this feat this year.  I spread the flame to candles in the fireplace, and then to to the Solstice Spiral Lights event at the local UU Church.  

Last year it rained buckets and doused all the candles we put out for the Solstice Spiral.  This year was drier, but also windier, so keeping candles lit was sometimes a challenge.  It would be fair to say that this year the Solstice Spiral Walk was more of a folk practice and less a Wicca-lite ritual.  I think most people enjoyed walking the spiral.  Of course, after drawing a spiral and laying down fir boughs and sounding a tone drum for over an hour, I'm a little sore.  

Winter Solstice Spiral

Winter Solstice morning.  The sun is actually shining through the clouds.  I've managed to take a beeswax candle, match, and really big magnifying glass and light the candle.  Granted, 9:30 AM is probably the earliest I've focused the flame of the Solstice Sun, but here in the Pacific Northwest, you grab your clear skies when you can.  Already as I write this, a grey blanket of clouds is passing in front of the sun and softening the definitions of shadows.   Luckily, I've got the flames ensconced in some fireplace candles and under a samovar filled with rooibos tea.

It's possible there might be a window of clear sky tonight between 5 PM and 7 PM which will allow for viewing of the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, but I'm not getting my hopes too far up.

Last night's Spiral Walk at the local UU church went well.  It was raining off and on, but the storms paused long enough for me to draw out a chalk spiral.  Wow, wet pavement eats through chalk quickly; I went through four sticks before I was through -- during Saturday's practice on dryer pavement, I only used one.

Once the spiral was laid out, an army of volunteers laid down the greens.  My old landfolks procured a prodigious amount of pine and fir boughs, and everyone was so into the spiral that they laid out extra lengths of the arms.  I thought we were going to use LEDs, but blank, white Saints' candles in tall glasses appeared, and I placed them along the spiral in eight spokes -- the placement started out improvised along the north-south axis, which suggested the east-west axis and the cross-quarter axes as well.  

In consideration of COVID, we didn't want folks to congregate in large groups, so the spiral had an exit and and entrance; since it was outside, we forewent with altars at the cardinal directions.  The idea was the folks could appear, walk the spiral, and leave; so there was no formal ritual planned as there had been the last two years.

A little before 5 PM and it got dark, I made a circuit of the spiral and lit the candles, invoking the directions in my head.  Somehow, the spokes of flame running through the spiral worked as directional altars.  The landfolks had brought their old firepit -- there was a blast from the past -- and had a small fire going near the eaves of the church.

Folks appeared and walked through the spiral.  I sat a little apart and watched shadowy forms walk through the greens and candlelight.  Out of the east came the distant hinking and honking of geese.  The sound grew and several V's of geese flew overhead, like souls of the Wild Host, traveling, traveling, traveling across the dark sky while we were earth-bound shadows traveling through a spiral of light -- and I was put into mind of mist-covered ferry rides, and transformations,  and questers, and cohorts.  

A moment later, the fey mood was broken by the recollection of Mark sarcastically referring to the more unlovely honks geese make as "God's angels, singing," and a social media post about the supposed yearly ritual Canadians perform in February, where they go out at midnights and breathe all of their nastiness into sleeping flocks of geese.  My laughter rang out across the spiral.  

The experience seemed to be a positive one for folks, and people found the change of direction at the spiral's center meaningful.  In the past, the entrance and exit had been the same, and folks would light a votive candle from a central flame in the spiral's center.   The rain and COVID and having the event outside reduced the participants' number from about a hundred to maybe thirty.

I sipped some black tea from a thermos.  I missed seeing C.N., who has health issues this year, but has in the past done a titanic amount of behind-the-scenes-work to make spirals happen.  I wondered if I should have brought my harp and played it.  Later on, Saro, one of my former landfolk, asked, "What happens if I go through the spiral backwards?"

"Demons," I said, and we laughed.  "Actually, the way the spiral's built, even if you entered from the South, the direction of fire, you'd be going widdershins, symbolically banishing or releasing fire, until you reached the center, where you'd go deosil, symbolically summoning or gathering the energy of Earth.   Entering from the North, the direction of Earth (and midnight and Winter), the idea is to symbolically mirror what the sun's doing in the sky: banishing a decrease of the light, and turning toward an increase.  So South to North is sort of a statement of the moment right now, whereas North to South is more a continuation."

The rain started to fall harder and doused the candles.  Saro and I tried to relight them, but as more rain fell it got into the melted wax and the wicks and the candles sputtered out.  I wasn't wearing a waterproof jacket, and started to get cold.  This was near the 7PM end-time of the event, so we started to break things down.  I silently opened the circle as volunteers gathered rained-out candles.  The boughs were swept into a corner of the parking lot. 

When I got home, there was candle wax on my pants, my sweater was soaked, I had pitch on my hands, and my hair smelled like a campfire.  My eyebrows were not singed, but I'm pretty sure the spiral walk counts as a Real Ritual. 

And now there's a fine, silver mist falling out of a pewter and turquoise sky, which is casting a rainbow over the houses across the street.

Rainy Solstice Eve

It's raining.  Hard.  The back patio is flooded, which probably means water isn't flowing through the French drain as it should.  Neighborhood pines, firs, and oaks sway in the occasional squalls. 

It's also dark.  The morning sun is behind the clouds, and a wan, grey light comes through the back sliding glass door.  It reaches about a third of the way into the front living room, and the only light in this room comes from the steady glow of the colored lights on the Christmas tree, the small lights from a porcelain winter village, and the blue-white glare of a laptop screen.  The front window blind is broken and down -- Mark and I will fix it presently, which should admit more daylight into the room.

Next to me on the couch, the dog dreams:  paws curl and legs flex; her breath like the pull of oars deep into a strong current.  Ears, nose, and jowls twitch.  Barks, faint, seep from the dream realm into the dim room.  

I've agreed to help construct a double-spiral for a meditative walk at the local UU Church.  The last two years, I've facilitated a labyrinth spiral walk and Wicca-flavored ritual.  Inside.  This year, in consideration of COVID, the spiral will be a double-spiral, with an entrance and exit -- which technically makes it not a labyrinth --  and outside.   Without a ritual.  The plan is to have folks walking in and walking out with as little clustering as possible.  There's probably not going to be enough sunlight for Solstice Fire, and in any case, LED candles for outside use have been purchased.  

Yesterday I made a wooden anchor so I can draw circles and arcs with a length of string and some chalk.  I tested it out in the nearby intersection and the process worked surprisingly well.  And then the rains came. You could still see the chalk spiral yesterday evening, but I'm not sure how much of it remains after a night of pouring.   The plan at the UU Church is to lay out greens on top of the chalk spiral, only in the parking lot.  

With any luck, it won't be pouring buckets on us as we lay things out.

Solstice Spiral Walk

 Last Saturday (Dec 21), I presided over a Solstice Meditation Spiral Walk.  It was Wicca-flavored, and I invoked the four powers of the four cardinal directions.  My friend, C.N. did a majority of the back-stage management, I mostly just showed up, arranged fir boughs into a spiral, and said the words.

We turned down and lights and played some Tibetan Tone Bowl music.  Mark suggested this, and it was better than the Enya compilation I'd put together because it was less intrusive.  Folks walked the spiral with an unlit candle, lit it at the center of the spiral from flames at a wrought-iron tree, and then walked out of the spiral with a lit candle.  At some point on the outward journey, they placed their lit candle along the spiral -- a spiral of shadows became a spiral of light as the nigh progressed.

I sat in the east and thought about keeping the space open to the realm of spirit while simultaneously keeping an eye out for any candles setting the boughs on fire.  None did, although there was one moment where I thought one had.  There was also another moment where one celebrant raised her candle over her head and a part of me wondered if she was going to set a banner over her ablaze.  In between those times, I sat and thought about the returning light (and how I hoped it would bring renewed energy and motivation).

About ninety minutes and about one-hundred-twenty folks later, it was time to open the circle and end the event.  It's always a little sad and strange to blow out the candles after everyone has left.

Decade In Review: 2009

Spring 2009

I was hanging out at the preschool after classes with a klatch of moms who shared lunch while our children played.   The discussion wandered from construction contracters to men in general.  At one point one of the moms realized they were trashing men, paused, looked me in the eye, said, "No offence," and went right on trashing men.

This was the most blatant encounter with what I would call "The Soccer Mom Club."   The SMC wasn't limited to any particular place.  At other times, I could be speaking with one or two member of the SMC; but if they reached a critical mass, they would either slowly close ranks into a circle with me on the outside, or spontaneously Feel The Need to Have a Deeply Personal Discussion (which would be signaled by a demi-glare -- eye-brows down, head thrust forward, chest turned away and a shoulder aimed in my general direction, and an unspoken "why don't you run off and do your little guy-things?" -- before backs were turned toward me).   If I didn't get the hint, the conversation would stall, and in the awkward silence, I would be stared at.

I could never quite tell if I was being excluded because I was a guy, or because I was gay, or both.


March 2009.  Under the (non) guidance of the new(ish) settled minister, I officially withdrew my membership at the Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans and the UU in Eugene.  I was devoting a whole lot of time to something that wasn't speaking to me.  This resulted in a bitchy, sarcastic, thirty page critique of (Eugene) NeoPaganism.   The Nice Version got posted to the blog.


When I think about my spirituality, I wish I could do it in a community setting, but I haven't found a community that's a good fit.  My credo is that one should attempt to live in a state of dynamic balance between different modalities of being (logical, emotional, physical, spiritual) and the cosmos.   OK, and I like numinous moments.

I'm still interested to some extent in group Neo-Pagan Ritual with other Gay Men, but the more I think about it, the more gender and eros seems like a mask deity wears for the benefit of human comprehension.  And the less involved I become in gender and orientation identity politics, the more connecting spiritually to trees and avoiding humanoid depictions of deity makes more sense.


April 2009.  Still feeling the burn of not preparing for preschool, Mark and I started looking at various kindergartens a year early.  We decided that most schools are pretty much the same, that the individual teachers probably have a larger impact than the general school, and that Parent Associations are functionally the same as cults.

We were pretty sure we'd try to get into a Montessori school, mostly because we already knew some of the teaching staff there and because it was  less than four blocks away from our home.


July 2009.  While at the beach, The Child cut open his big toe with a clam gun.  This happened at the same time that I was alone with him on the beach, on the strand, when the tide turn and inundated all the plastic pirates we'd set up in the sand.

Part of me wanted to gather all the plastic toys floating away in the surf while I slung a shrieking child onto my shoulder for the trek back to the beach house.  I jogged from the surf until my breath started coming out in puffs.  I walked quickly through the dunes and grasses, wondering if The Child's toe was still attached.  And then I started walking, with a stitch in my side, realizing that I would be a failure if a tsunami were coming and that I was a total failure anyway because now my Child would be maimed for life because I couldn't toss him over my shoulder and run a half-mile over sand in less than three minutes.   And I was an unfit parent.   And a lousy gay husband for being out-of-shape.

Thankfully, Mark was at the house, because the rest of the folks there were Mostly Not Helpful.


August 2009.  We're not sure if it was coming off of the water slide at the local pool the wrong way, or catching The Child a million times in the pool at my folks', but over the summer I developed Ithiopathic Adhesive Encapsulitis.   Every now and then I'd have a moment where I would forgot that my shoulder and humerus were essentially fused, reach out to catch a football or open a door the wrong way, and nearly fall over from the pain.

I wound up seeing a physical therapist who seemed have gotten his certification straight out of high school (he was young).  The pain meds I was taking to help me sleep through the night made me loopy and destroyed my short term memory; after a while weren't doing anything to help, so I stopped using them.  I ended up doing a zillion stretches.

I was lucky, because although my shoulder Really Hurt A Lot, it didn't hurt all the time.  And the PT helped.  But I still couldn't lift things or get books from shelves above my head.  Having a frozen shoulder made me feel ancient and useless and crippled.

Not being able to move my shoulders made dancing the Abbot's Bromely Horn dance at Shrewsbury difficult, and sleeping on the ground in a tent impossible.   This was the first time in almost a decade that I hadn't camped on site at Shrewsbury -- and I didn't miss it.


Late 2009, I sold two stories to Thaumatrope, a Twitter e-zine.  With a 120 character limit, these were fun to write and gratifying to see tweeted.  I wrote one in thirty seconds, in the clutch of inspiration, after The Child ate a Christmas Angel Cookie's wings off.   Sadly, Thaumatrope closed a year or so later.

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This year was the first year where I was confronted by the limits of my body.  I think I don't worry too much about getting old, but it would be really nice if I wasn't in chronic pain.  Also, opening doors shouldn't be that hard.

Decade in Review: 2007

Feb 17, 2007.  New Moon.  After months and months of knowing I was a finalist, I received the news that I had placed Third in Writers of the Future!  I was going to LA for a week-long workshop.   I'd submitted twelve manuscripts over a four year period and it had finally paid off!


March 2007.  Having jump-started CUUPs at UUCE, I was encouraged to give a four-minute presentation at a local Interfaith gathering.   After a brief introduction Neo-Paganism, I lead a quick visualization of the four elements.   The presentation was well received, probably because I used my radio voice (someone  commented that I should make relaxation tapes).   The presentation resulted in a jump in CUUPs attendance.

I'm trying to find the exact date, but sometime around now the Rev. Carolyn Colbert retired from being the UUCE minister.   She'd been serving there for seven or so years, and everyone was used to her style.  With her departure, a search began, and various interim ministers took over the pastoral care of the church.   What I learned from this was that I'd been coming to UUCE to hear Carolyn's sermons, which I always found challenging.

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A year or two of being parents put the final nail in the coffin as far as our involvement with the gay community went.  Not that we were terribly active in gay community events after the Outdoor Club (a local LGBTQ hiking group) imploded, but we stopped hearing much or seeing our gay friends.   And then they began the exodus to Portland.

Sometime in the spring, I went to a Eugene LGBTQ Community building event, held at a local high school.  After listening to folks talk about self-esteem issues on the University of Oregon campus, lesbian dance parties, queer youth, and the logistics of building a Eugene Queer Resources Center, the question came up about community.  What did members of the LGBTQ community want to build for ourselves?

When I was my turn to speak I said, "Hi, my name is John and I'm a gay dad."  (pause for applause)  "My husband would be here, but he's at home caring for our child.  I'd like to remind planners that if you want to include more parents, many toddlers take a nap at this time [11 AM - 1 PM].   So, I have a question:  could the gay dads in the audience raise their hands?"  One other guy in a room of about a two hundred raised his hand.  "Thanks," I said, "that's kind of what I thought." ("But hooray for lesbian moms, too," an older woman across the aisle said encouragingly.)  I sat down.  The other gay dad disappeared by the time the meeting finished.

As Mark pointed out later, just because someone else is  a gay dad doesn't mean that we'd get along with them or want to hang out.  Which is true, but still....


May 2007.  I attended a wonderful local writers' workshop with Ellen Datlow.   She wasn't enamored with "The Colossus of Rhodes," but she did like "Sky Dance" (although apparently it's too much like, "Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death").


August 2007.  I flew down to LA for the Writers of the Future (WOTF)  workshop and awards ceremony.  Fellow Wordo Damon Kaswell had also placed in that year's volume, and we flew down together.   At the LA airport, some of my luggage got lost, which included my wedding jacket and shirt.

My roommate during the workshop was Tony Pi, the other half of the Canadian team which was in a friendly, unofficial contest with the Wordos to get into WOTF.  The workshop was like a giant Wordos marathon, only with more professional advice.

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What I learned was that I could pound out a rough draft of a 4000 word story in in less than 24 hours.  Writing it was scary, because we had to interview a stranger as a character prompt.  My stranger was a kind of homeless, down on his luck, hot-chocolate loving, fifty-something art-dealer theologian.

I could follow some of his rambly connections very easily and  throughout our conversation I kept thinking, "Oh crap; we sound like we've started in similar places and what do I need to do so I don't turn into some shabby, damaged prophet, mumbling a burnt-out vision to himself in the streets?"  Considering how this Ghost of Christmas Future kept sitting in the middle of the story I was feverishly trying to write, I'm amazed I produced any manuscript at all.

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What I learned is that writing is a business, and that there's a lot of competition.  Charles Brown sat  down with us, and the first words as he looked around the room were, "Out of the twelve of you sitting here, only one or two of you are going to make it."

This was followed later in the day by a moment where I overheard a hotel hallway conversation.  Another hotel guest asked a big name author who all the folks in tuxedos were (we were getting fitted).  And the author said, "This is part of the Writers of the Future contest; these folks are all writers."

"Oh! Writers!  And who are you?"  the guest asked.  "Are you famous?  Have I read you?"  I could imagine her reaching into her purse for a pen and pad to autograph.

The big name author told her who he was.  "I write science fiction and fantasy."

"Oh," she said, obviously let down he wasn't Stephen King, Tom Clancy, or John Grisham.  It was obvious she didn't read the genre and she'd never heard of the author before.

I let myself into my room, thinking, "And let this be a lesson unto you."

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I learned that it's good for my mental health to hang out and talk with other writers.

I learned I should have started banging out a novel as soon as I had heard the news I'd placed in WOTF so I could have a draft of the manuscript to hand out to various folks and agents.

I learned that KD Wentworth remembered "Briallan Dreaming of Myrmidons," "Skies of Dreaming," "Sky Dance," and "The Colossus of Rhodes" -- stories that had made it to semi-finalist status in previous years -- and we had a great conversation about writing, editing, and submissions.  The woman who had been a gatekeeper became a new friend.

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Mark and The Child came down for the ceremony, as did my parents.  The ceremony was kind of cheesy, but I loved it anyway.   And it was validating; instead of wondering what the heck I was doing, my family could now say, "Well, he's an award-winning author."

There was a lunar eclipse, which wasn't the most visible from the hotel, shining the the sky of LA.


Oct 2007.  Damon and I appeared briefly on the local TV station to talk about our stories in Writers of the Future.  It was part of a four month period of book signings up and down the Willamette Valley.  Damon and I had a lot of fun, and I learned how to hawk books.

Shortly afterward, I took a break from being the Wordos chair.  About four years prior,  Jerry Oltion wanted a break from running the Wordos meetings.  He called a meeting of various folks and because I was so consistent about attending that I got dubbed key-holder.  For the next couple of years, I was part of a triumvir consisting of Eric Witchey, Jay Lake and myself.  and then the next thing I knew I was facilitating the meetings.   And then gas prices went up  and folks from out of town stopped coming to Eugene for Wordos messages and for a while I was running things solo.  But I was done facilitating, and I took a break from the Wordos.


November 2007.  A particularly poorly attended CUUPs ritual was a wake-up call that the honeymoon with UUCE was over.  Clearly, I was doing something wrong, because I wasn't attracting a consistent core group of Neo-Pagans.

Neither Ronald Hutton nor Margot Adler clones had appeared for deep theological discussions or numinous moments.  Many women dropped out of CUUPs to pursue a multi-week, women-only, program entitled "Cakes for the Queen of Heaven."  And, while they were warmly interested, many of the regular Sunday going UUCE members were more focused on Neo-Paganism as part of a cultural diversity course.

Into this vacuum crept prosperity-focused folks, and before long we were having rituals about writing "prosperity checks" and "reclaiming your personal power."

Around this time UUCE hired a settled minister, who everyone had high hopes for, but who ultimately (to put it kindly) did not work out.   I'd thought, based on some of the things he had said, that he would engender a sense of wonder and worship with regard to the natural world; unfortunately, that never panned out.


November 21, 2007.  I had a fun time being a panelist at OryCon.  I had so much fun dancing Saturday night, I managed to get really sick.


December 2007.  For my 43rd birthday, Mark decorated the house as if it were Savoré ("Tea the Way It Used to Be").  He dressed up like a French waiter, put lovely linens on the tables, and served tea, sandwiches and petit fours.   At some point we realized The Child had pilfered quite a few petit fours and moved them to a higher table. 

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2007 was the Year of the Gay Pagan Writer.  It felt like my writing career was picking up, and even if Neo-Pagan events had fizzled a little at the end, the year started out strong.

Decade in Review: 2006

June 2006.  On the solstice, Mark and I signed a zillion papers and became the owners of a new house.  We probably bought at the hight of the housing bubble.

Our realtor was great; she put up with me pretending to be a drunk undergraduate and shrieking "I am soooo drunk" as an illustration of why we didn't want to live in the Student Hell part of town; and put up with Mark asking during one open house, "So, is this where they hide the bodies?"


June 27 2006.  I lead a Wicca 101 ritual as a Sunday presentation at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Eugene.  The presentation was a brief lecture on the stations of the sun, followed by a Tree of Life meditation and a Spiral Dance.  It went really well, and everyone seemed friendly and enthusiastic.  It was so refreshing to find a "Neo-Pagan Church" that wasn't a collection of (in my harsher moments) "flakey, superstitious refugees from Math and Science."

I was very excited to be at UUCE, and I was hoping for rabbinical discussions of the Spirit of Life as experienced through rituals of the four elements.   In the months that followed, I had high hopes for an active Covenant of UU Pagans, actively, ardently, and jubilantly exploring the Seventh Principle (Respect for the Interdependent Web of All Existence of Which We Are a Part) with the tools of the Sixth Source (spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions) tempered with those of the Fifth Source (the guidance of reason and the results of science).


September 2006.  After lots of painting and scraping and cleaning, with lots of help from my dad, we moved into the new house.  About this time I crenelated what I thought was the front boxwood, but was in fact, the front azalea.  Mark was horrified and the azalea has only recovered in about 2013.  I've been banned from pruning or trimming in the garden ever since.

Against Mark's advice, I set up a green gazing globe in the back yard.  We'd had the gazing globe in our old place's front yard and I loved it:  it was an axis mundi for me.    It lasted about a month before The Child grabbed its base as I was picking him up.  Let's just say the whole event was like a Greek play by Euripides.